Now, as I stood looking along Alley No. 39, which was perfectly straight and ran parallel with Alley No. 38, I realised I was quite fond of chaotic, disorganised Fallowfields.
Nevertheless, I had to admit that the City of Scoffers was also impressive in its own way. Twenty-seventh Avenue was home to a number of enormous buildings. These included the Institute for Mathematical Excellence, the Hydrostatics Society and the headquarters of the CoS Railway Network.
The latter edifice caught my attention because of the huge banner hanging above the main entrance. It bore a forthright message in large black letters:
BUY RAILWAY BONDS
RESIST THE THREAT FROM THE WEST.
I couldn’t imagine what sort of threat Fallowfields was supposed to be making to this formidable city. As far as I knew we were in no position to threaten anybody just now, what with our worthless currency reserves, our unpaid debt, our lack of ships and the prolonged absence of our emperor. Besides which, I’d have thought there was more to a successful society than simply expanding the railways. Surely they’d gone far enough already. What were they going to do when they reached the coast? Dig tunnels under the seabed? The idea was preposterous! I was coming to the conclusion that these ‘scoffers’ wasted a lot of energy on unnecessary projects, when they should be enjoying the finer things in life, as practised by people like Wryneck and Smew. Where, I wondered, were the museums, the libraries and the art galleries?
My question was answered when I reached the very next corner. Stretching for about half a mile between Twenty-seventh Avenue and J-Street was the City of Scoffers Museum of Fine Arts (incorporating the civic library).
‘Well,’ I reflected, ‘I suppose at least that’s something.’
After another ten minutes’ walk I came to the concert hall. According to a sign at the top of the steps, this was the residence of the New Municipal Orchestra. It was also to be my workplace for the foreseeable future, so I headed up the steps and went inside. I had been informed at the employment exchange that I’d be answerable to the Professor of Music. There was an attendant on duty in the foyer. I introduced myself and he told me the professor was busy in his study. I would doubtless meet him in due course. Meanwhile he showed me into the box office and suggested I made myself familiar with the various types of ticket. The box office was small but comfortable. It had two windows: one overlooked the stone stairway outside; the other faced in towards the foyer. Directly opposite were the doors to the auditorium. Behind them I could hear the faint sound of an orchestra tuning their instruments; and for a poignant moment I was reminded of my former days of glory in Fallowfields. I also knew from experience that they were about to commence a rehearsal.
The ticketing arrangements looked simple enough to me, so after going through them a few times I emerged from the box office to stretch my legs. By now I’d managed to locate the Professor of Music’s study. It was over in the far corner of the foyer, and I resolved to keep one eye on the door.
Positioned close to the box office was a noticeboard, its purpose presumably being to advertise upcoming events at the concert hall. For some reason it was completely bare at present, and I was just pondering this fact when the professor’s door opened. Through it came Greylag.
His appearance had changed since our last encounter. Instead of his olive drab uniform he was now wearing a formal tail coat. As he came wandering into the foyer I experienced an odd sinking feeling. After all, Greylag was the individual on whom I now depended for my reference and travel permit. Quickly my mind ran back over the previous few months as I tried to remember exactly how I’d treated him. Had I been kind to him, unkind, or indifferent? If I had been unkind, would Greylag now be vengeful? I really couldn’t tell. He had no knowledge of my failed attempts to purchase sweets for him and the other musicians. All he knew was that I’d allowed him to be transported to the City of Scoffers; and now the tables were well and truly turned.
I was relieved, therefore, when suddenly he recognised me and spoke in a friendly manner.
‘Oh hello, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s very nice to see you.’
‘It’s very nice to see you too,’ I replied (I nearly added ‘Professor Greylag’, but I thought better of it).
In the same instant I realised that his mind was on far more important matters than vengeance. He had an orchestra to rehearse, and as always that was his priority. Furthermore, it occurred to me that Greylag’s situation had changed much more drastically than mine. Only yesterday he’d been a serf in the Empire of Greater Fallowfields. Now he was Professor of Music in a rich and powerful city. No wonder, then, that he looked a little distracted.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ he answered, ‘but I’m afraid this professorship is taking some getting used to. I don’t know anything about organising performances, selling tickets and so on. I’m just a musician, plain and simple.’
‘Well, don’t you worry about anything except the music,’ I assured him. ‘We’ll take care of everything else.’
It gave me a nice feeling to be able to say this to Greylag, and he seemed slightly more at ease after our brief conversation. All the same I sensed that something else was troubling him. With regret I realised that I was hardly in a position to delve further. I was a humble booking clerk and he was my superior, so for the time being I would have to mind my own business.
Not long afterwards Greylag headed into the auditorium. Soon I heard the orchestra striking up, and I knew that for the moment at least he would be happy in his work.
For me, though, there was another revelation in store. Once Greylag had left me I resumed my duties in the box office. I’d been busy for about half an hour arranging the tickets according to their different colours when I happened to look out of the window. To my surprise I saw Sanderling at the top of the steps. He stood perfectly still, facing the street, with his hands clasped behind his back. He was wearing his dandy coat, and the buttons were fastened all the way up to the collar. I dashed straight outside to speak to him.
‘Sanderling!’ I said with glee.
‘Greetings,’ he replied.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Front of house,’ he said. ‘They thought I looked the part.’
‘Who did?’
‘The people at the employment exchange.’
‘Well, yes,’ I said, glancing at his tightly buttoned coat, ‘now you come to mention it you do.’
‘Thanks.’
‘How much are they paying you?’
‘An anvil a day.’
‘Same here,’ I said.
Thus we were united in poverty.
However, it turned out we weren’t as poor as we first imagined: our wages included free board and lodging. The accommodation was in an annexe at the rear of the concert hall, and a little later we went to have a look.
It was all rather disappointing. Priority had been given to members of the orchestra; Sanderling and I were a mere afterthought. Personally, I thought that the musicians were being unduly mollycoddled. They each had a private room with hot and cold running water and a view over the city. Sanderling and I, by contrast, had to share a kind of broom cupboard fitted with bunk beds. Also, we soon discovered that a tram went past our window every ten minutes. Despite these drawbacks, Sanderling was enthusiastic.
‘We used to have bunk beds at the admiralty,’ he said. ‘They’re great fun!’
Maybe so, but I suspected Sanderling was the sort of person who fidgeted about in bed. I had a feeling that if he lay in his bunk all night dreaming of dancing girls, it would be me who didn’t get any sleep.
Over the next few days it became evident that there were influences bearing down on Greylag over which he had no control. He may have been Professor of Music but he did not have a completely free rein; quite the opposite in fact.
One morning there appeared on the noticeboard a programme of forthcoming performances. Apparently the orchestra would be playi
ng the entire works of a composer who happened to be a former resident of the city. It was the centenary of his birth and the citizens wished to celebrate it with a music festival in his name.
Now this was all very well on the face of it: they were clearly proud of this man and regarded him as their greatest (perhaps only) composer. Nonetheless, as soon as I read the notice I began to have misgivings. This was the same composer whom Greylag had described to me as a ‘fake’ all those months ago. I remembered that he’d been totally dismissive of his first symphony and even suggested he’d made it up as he went along. Now Greylag was being asked to perform all of his works: the programme included nine symphonies, seven overtures, five quartets and three sonatas for piano and violin; also a tone poem and an orchestral concerto. Poor Greylag! He must have been in turmoil! Privately I conjectured that this was the real cause of his disquiet.
Even so, he gave the outward impression of someone who had embraced the festival wholeheartedly. First of all he researched and collated all the composer’s manuscripts. He spent hours locked away in his study examining the relevant scores and preparing them for performance. Then he set about rehearsing the orchestra. It was going to take several weeks to work through the whole series, but by employing his usual thorough methods he was soon fully into his stride and the festival promised to be a success.
We received frequent visits from senior local figures, including Merganser, Gadwall and Grosbeak. They constantly enquired about the progress that Greylag was making; they asked if he was happy with conditions in the concert hall; and they reminded him that if there was anything he required he only needed to ask. By thus encouraging Greylag I speculated whether they were seeking reflected glory, in the way I had unashamedly in the recent past, or if they indeed believed in the talents of their home-grown composer. He was, after all, fairly famous; we even knew his name in Greater Fallowfields.
Personally, I quite liked some of the tunes I heard in rehearsals, but I’d learned during my tenure at the cake that tunes alone were not enough. Greylag’s search for melodic discipline had taken him far beyond mere ‘tunes’. His compositions allowed much more generous living space for his melodies, and this was the difference between his work and the collection currently on offer. I noticed at the beginning of each rehearsal that Greylag drew a deep breath as if bracing himself against what was to come. It was plain to me that he underwent a kind of torture whenever he performed these pieces, but his patrons never guessed a thing. Occasionally they looked in at practice sessions, standing inconspicuously (or so they thought) in the shadows. Afterwards, when they departed, they never failed to give nods of approval.
Meanwhile, posters started to appear all over the surrounding area: the composer’s portrait was to become increasingly familiar over the ensuing weeks. Even Sanderling was aware that there was a big festival drawing near, though as usual he managed to get hold of the wrong end of the stick.
‘I presume there’ll be dancing as well as music, will there?’ he ventured late one evening as we lay in our respective bunks.
‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘It depends who turns up.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’re right.’
He didn’t pursue the subject further, but for the remainder of the night he was particularly restless.
Judging by ticket sales the event was guaranteed to be a triumph. No sooner had I opened the box office on the first day of booking than long queues began to form. Sanderling had his work cut out keeping everyone in line. He was also required to clear the way for visiting dignitaries who came demanding seats in the grand tier. I wondered if any of them had the habit of coughing during quiet passages; or maybe such lapses had been abolished in the City of Scoffers.
That wouldn’t have surprised me at all. The entire place ticked along like clockwork, and anything which jeopardised its smooth operation was dealt with immediately. Rules and regulations were applied to the letter; correct procedures were invariably followed; and, of course, the trains always ran on time. As a matter of fact, from what I could gather it was the railways which were the governing force here. Virtually every aspect of daily life was imbued with their influence: the dictatorship of the clocks was endemic and unavoidable. Standard Railway Time applied throughout the year; the length of a day had nothing to do with natural occurrences such as sunrise and sunset. Instead, the hours were numbered simply from one to twenty-four, the terms ‘noon’ and ‘midnight’ having long since been abandoned. Great towering floodlights illuminated the industrial areas, and industry in general made no attempt to be quiet during hours of darkness. All the factories and mills had their own shunting yards; accordingly, workers’ shift patterns revolved around the arrivals and departures of freight. The elevated tramline functioned in harmony with the railways; so did the postal system and the network for the delivery of milk. Everybody carried a pocket watch or similar timepiece (this was compulsory), but actually you could tell the time from the hoots and whistles of passing engines. Even the forthcoming concerts were scheduled to coincide with train services (not the other way round). Such was the scoffers’ obsession with time that every rehearsal was attended by a uniformed man holding a stopwatch. He recorded the exact duration of each symphony, overture or sonata; the results were then posted outside the concert hall each evening, presumably so that the audience knew in advance when the music would end. Greylag seemed quite bemused when he first noticed the man with the stopwatch, but after a while he just ignored him.
Even so, the importance of the railways couldn’t be denied. We had already seen its effect in the empire: our clocks had been changed, our currency undermined and our population depleted; and yet Fallowfields only occupied one branch of a vast structure. The City of Scoffers had a reach which extended in many other directions too. How many realms, I pondered, now lay under its ‘protection’? Was there any limit to its policy of continual enlargement? Obviously not. The railways developed alongside the industries they were built to serve. Each created demands on the other, and the only solution was perpetual expansion.
The consequences could be seen every day at the central railway station. Hordes of migrants disembarked from countless trains, all clutching their ‘recruiting sixpences’. I soon got into the routine of wandering down to the station every morning to see if I recognised any of the new arrivals. I wasn’t sure who I expected to see: definitely not Whimbrel, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dotterel or Garganey had shown up, attracted merely by curiosity. In the event neither of them did, but there were plenty of other Fallowfieldsmen to make up the number. They were easily distinguishable because even though they all wore identical olive drab uniforms, they all looked completely different to one another. The purpose of a uniform, as I understood it, was to make everybody seem alike, but for some reason this precept didn’t apply to my compatriots. Some of them looked downright scruffy despite their uniforms being crisply pressed and brand new from the factory; others wore their uniforms in their own personal style; for example, with the cuffs rolled back or the collar turned up. Still others had been given outfits which were plainly the wrong size for them. One individual set his look off with a jaunty cap; another displayed a sprig of heather in his buttonhole. They were all typical Fallowfieldsmen, yet their collective appearance was hardly consistent with the notion of uniformity.
What these men had in common, of course, was their new destination. They all came in hope: some naturally to be disappointed; others to succeed. How many had been recruited unfairly I didn’t know, but in any case it was too late now. There was no going back without a train ticket, and you couldn’t get one of those without a travel permit.
If you wanted a job, on the other hand, this was unquestionably the place to come. The City of Scoffers was confident and unabashed. Above its proud buildings fluttered the hammer and anvil, symbol of its industrial might. The people went about with pocketfuls of money which they spent freely, thus generating even more wealth. The process was seeming
ly unstoppable.
Nevertheless, I sensed there was a chink in the armour. It was hardly anything, but it was there all right: a hidden uncertainty lurking behind the apparent success. Whimbrel had first drawn my attention to it weeks earlier when he mentioned the stream of visitors to the observatory. They all wished to peer through his telescope, and without exception they turned it to the west, never explaining why. Similarly, here in the city was the banner urging people to buy railway bonds and ‘resist the threat from the west’. It hung outside the headquarters of the CoS Railway Network, somewhere I’d have thought of as a veritable stronghold. Yet to my ears the appeal sounded almost fearful.
I glanced at this banner whenever I passed by, not least because I was astounded by the sheer size of it. Then, one bright and breezy morning, I noticed the wording had been changed. Now it simply said:
THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO TRAINS.
I looked at the banner a second time, just to make sure I hadn’t read it wrongly; then I continued on my way, trying to work out just what lay behind this strident claim. Needless to say, there was an alternative to trains – namely, shipping – but as we were so far from the sea I allowed them this error. Moreover, if it was purely a matter of railways versus canals, then obviously the statement was correct: canals became obsolete as a means of transport the moment the first length of track was laid.
I got the impression, however, that an element of self-doubt had emerged about investing solely in railways: were they trying to convince themselves they hadn’t taken the wrong course? Well, if they had they should have thought about it years ago. As far as the City of Scoffers was concerned there was indeed no alternative to trains, but they didn’t need to shout it from the rooftops.
A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In Page 19